I usually write up big reviews but you should only look at Marlow's smile at the preview pic. Doesn't feel like buying it yet? Look at it again, then again...you'll feel like buying it sooner or later.

This game is so good that I'll ♥♥♥♥ing buy ten copies at it at the holiday sale and give em to random people.

Marlow Briggs and the Mask of Death is a third person hack and slash, action adventure that is probably the closest thing to God of War on the PC. It is fantastic game in general, let alone the budget price. It has over the top action, which means plenty of explosions and crazy moments like Marlow hanging from a helicopter and he needs to dodge left or right. The game plays great, the graphics are amazing. The camera will zoom out for you to see beautiful vistas, foreboding caverns and giant industrial complexes. There is a scope and scale to this game. You can be so tiny in a grand complex and you feel it. The game really shines with its gameplay diversity. You won't just be hacking and slashing. There are fun turret sections, plenty of not too difficult platform traversal, climbing, swinging, running from boulders, pushing objects, sliding down areas, working turnstile levers and even playing a top down vertical scrolling shooter. These other elements bring a lot of diversity to break up the brawling.

The story is simple and so bad its good. You're Marlow, visiting his girlfriend in a remote jungle, so she can quit her job working for an evil madman bent on immortality. To show her he means business, he kills you right then and there to kick off the game. Marlow gets killed with a magical artifact and the mask of Death resurrects him. So now with crazy magical powers, Marlow must save his girlfriend. The mask will guide Marlow along the way. There is a lot of humor between Marlow and the mask. Its not a comedy game, but has dabs of humor here and there. Marlow Briggs knows how implausible the situation is and doesn't always take things seriously. The mask is there to aide and taunt Marlow when he dies. To show the game's humor, the antagonist is named Heng Low. He makes some great announcements throughout the game, such as, "all personnel, go grab a gun. There's a nice reward for killing Marlow Briggs. You can use that reward to pay for the weapon rental." Oh and "All employees are fired, please avoid flaming death traps and bottomless pits on your way out."

The core game play is simple. You can move, double jump, weak attack, strong attack, grapple, block, roll in any direction with the right analog stick, use magic by pressing two buttons and change weapons with the D-pad. Marlow will get four weapons throughout the game. Each weapon has a different speed, range and damage, but for the most part they are pretty much the same. When he attacks he'll swirl around, causing beautiful death. Its visually appealing. There are four spells to earn. A fiery meteor shower in a circle, earth spikes in a straight line, frost to freeze a radius of enemies and a storm. Every enemy gives you experience to upgrade your weapon and magic levels. It seems like every spell depletes all your mana. Luckily each dead enemy brings you health and mana. There is plenty of mana, health and experience around each level. You just need to hold a button to absorb it, so if an enemy is around, they can keep you from getting them. Enemies can be grappled and thrown, but more interesting, they can be converted, making them fight for you! Your block can reflect projectiles if you time it right and you have magical projectiles of your own.

It is all a nice system, made even more enjoyable by a wide cast of enemies. The standard soldiers don't use guns, just machetes since this is a hack and slash. Rocket launchers that need you to reflect. Riot troops that need to have their shields knocked away with specific attack combos. Bugs that can be easily squashed. There are plenty of mini bosses that show up in the game. First they get their own fight, but then they appear later as common enemies. When most of the mini bosses get weak, you can hop on and control them. Not like the conversion, but rode. You can ride a giant scorpion and control it to kill enemies. You can ride giants the same way. The visual is better than the actual fun. I could kill the enemies a lot quicker without being on top of slow lumbering giants.

Speaking of giants, then there are the game's big bosses. The bosses so big that you're as tall as a single eye. Each big boss has many parts and they're quite memorable. Its all simple pattern recognition though so its easy enough once you figure out the pattern. The only problem is that you don't do much damage. At the end there is even a quick time event or mash the grapple button.

You have NO control over the camera. It is always carefully placed and follows you well enough. I only had a problem with that once or twice in the whole game. The load times are hid. I didn't notice one at all unless I came back to a save. Dying has a really quick reload time to the point its just a quote, then you respawn from the last frequent checkpoint. Its so nice to be back in the action.

To keep things interesting, there are challenges in the game. Things like you're sliding down a hill and need to move left and right. The challenge is collecting all the experience orbs! Don't collect them all? You can restart or just keep playing. You can kill all the helicopters in the turret section or the town down shooter section. It adds an extra level of challenge to what would be an easy game on normal (medium) difficulty. Even though the game stays the same level of difficulty, the later areas just take longer. Bigger enemies take more damage. Puzzles take longer.

Other elements in the game have players jumping between three mine carts to avoid obstacles. Floating with angels wings between platforms. Swimming through a swinging guillotine river. Climbing wall vines, killing worms. Inching with Marlow's back to the wall to avoid either falling or gears. Clinging to cliff sides. Dodging flaming wrecking balls. Turret shooting the pistons on a giant lava scooper as you ride around a cart. Getting chased by helicopters. Seeing giant scorpions get crushed by huge boulders completely unscripted. Escaping under a door by rolling just before spikes crushed the enemies in the room. Fighting enemies on a helipad as it flipped and flew through the air. Seeing the giant facility Marlow is in was really mobile with treads.

It all feels like a high budget game in a lot of ways, but lacking in a few, especially the cut scenes. There aren't many animated cut scenes, but the majority of the scenes are fly around of scenes. Its like bullet time. You'll see a still frame circling around Marlow as he's hacked through a flame throwing soldier. As the camera swings around, it will reveal a helicopter. Then Marlow leaping from the copter, only to swing around and show Marlow slashing through an insect. I'm happy that the cut scenes are the worst part of the game, especially since they're skipable. They spent the time in the animation, character models and gameplay.

The game is well worth the $5 price tag it currently has. I am shocked this game doesn't have a cult following or more popularity. Even with a 7 hour run time and not too much frills for any replay value, I think this could stand shoulder to shoulder with God of War. The diversity really kept me engaged. Nothing overstayed its welcome. 7 hours was the right time. Its best to leave players wanting more. Odd now Steam says that I only played 5 hours. Oh steam.

If you ever played God of War and then you think to yourself "Oh man, I wish I could play as a black guy with ancient shaman powers who wields a shapeshifting scythe, have to master the four elements, save his girlfriend from being kidnapped and save the world while there are explosions everywhere!".

Surprisingly good graphics for a budget game, including some beautiful enviroments.

Doesn't take itself too seriously. There's some funny dialogue there and there, and during the first third of the game it's hard to find a minute without at least a couple of explosions.

Pretty competent hack'n'slash game, although the combo system doesn't have too much depth. It's just mindless fun.

Decent amount of different enemies.

Really cheap during a Steam Sale.

Cons

During the last third, the game just throws miniboss after miniboss at you, which gets tiring

Levels are not that well designed. For example, there are losts of safe points where you can attack your enemies but they can't hit you, and sometimes if you're lucky freezing some of them close to a ledge will make them fall even if they aren't supposed to.

VeredictProbably the best paid game you can get on Steam for a dollar or less (during a Sale). Might get a bit repetitive towards the end and you can pretty much beat every fight using just two or three different combos and dodging, but if you're just looking for a fun, cheap God of War-like that doesn't overstay it's welcome, buy this game.

It's pretty much impossible to hate on a game like Marlow Briggs And The Mask Of Death. It is self-aware as can be, knowing it's a lot of nonsense. Marlow is armed with its crazy, ridiculous, and off-the-wall story: Marlow dies and is brought back to life to avenge his death, to save his girlfriend Eva, and stop a corrupt man from trying to rule the world. If thay isn't enough - Marlow is constantly making a barrage of in-jokes aimed at video-games in general, action movies + games, and other things of that sort; and tons of non-stop action + explosions. And for most of this action/platforming game - what nonsense it is! Marlow is just tons of fun and will make you grin + smile, most of the time.

Most of the time, constanly running at 60 frames per second on my PC (i7 950; GF GTX 560 Ti; 8 GB RAM; Win 7 64-bit) - Marlow runs extremely well. Very rarely did it even drop below 60! Not only that - but the art-direction + technical graphics are surprisingly actually good here, as well. Marlow's non-stop barrage of action feels fantastic in the controls department with an XBox 360 Controller, playing and feeling very similar to the Darksiders series - which is fantastic! Combat feels + looks smooth, fast, and always is on point! If you're into action-games like the Darksiders (which many feel is similar to God Of War series, which I don't have and haven't played b/c I am a PC gamer) - you'll probably feel right at home with Marlow.

Just when you think you've had your fill of using a certain weapon or skill, expect more to suddenly come your way. Expect a suddeny upgrade to a skill or new game-mechanic introduced. And if this isn't enough - Marlow has mini-games of collecting objects in a race-like manner (which can be compared to on the Leaderboards); and even a mini-heliocopter game that feel like a throwback to Capcom's 1942 + Taito's Sky Shark. Marlow will constantly surprise the player with things like this, from in-jokes to game-references.

If this sounds up your alley, Marlow is sure to put a lot of cheesy smiles on the face gamers. That is, until the last few levels come around, when the game decides to severely spike up in difficulty. Regardless, since most of your time spent for the 6-10 hours this campaign should last you (took me a bit longer than 10 hours b/c some areas were a bit frustrating to get though), Marlow is going to deliver a riotous, ridiculous, hilarious, and very fun action-packed roller-coaster ride of a game!

A cheesy B movie like video game both humourous and frustrating at times but overall very enjoyable.

Pros:

- It doesn't take itself too seriously and that's a good thing. - Beautiful envrions and vistas.- Humourous banter between the mask and Marlow.- Fun and competent fighting engine\combo system albeit with limited depth.- Doesn't crash and is fkn cheap. (IMO it's worth more than $5)

Cons:

- Level design. Some strange placement of invisible walls got me killed a few times.- Too many HP\MP refills, maybe it's needed for Hard but on Normal there're too many in close proximity of each other.- Too much cool stuff occurs during the cutscenes and I wished that we were the ones creating the shown mayhem.

Limitations:

- Limited options menu, like not much there...AT ALL- Weapon upgrades, by the end of the game I had so much experience points and nothing to upgrade

Verdict:

- Fun and enjoyable GoW clone that doesn't take itself too seriously and is ridiculously cheap. Also that ending credits though, I was almost at the top dammit

Marlow Briggs and the Mask of Death is a third person, hack and slash fest. It is perfect for the player who wants to experience a game that brings to life the feel of a classic action blockbuster film, over-the-top action and cinematic gameplay with a focus on relentless high-octane combat and danger filled exotic environments. As combo-driven adventure brawlers go, there's no earthly reason this should have gone under the charts like it did. I have no idea, but this game absolutely deserves a place with its AAA genre-cousins.

Marlow Briggs is also played the most known actor from the hilarious series Saints Row. I'm sure many of you know him from there as pierce washington, Dex and so on. But enough of me talking lets get down to the pro and cons.

Pro:

-Pretty much nonstop action with very little noticeable loading-Great voice acting-Looks nicely polished-Great Combos-Tons o' Explosions-Interesting Soundtrack that doesnt get dull- The mask calls you chu-chu and insults you if you die and while playing xD.

Cons:

-Very little graphic customization so if you can't run it there's really nothing you can do to make it happen (Top tier pcs)-Lack of enemy diversity-Lot o' Insects

God of War and Uncharted met and made a totally predictable but polished summer blockbuster equivalency. Reminded me of something Nick Cage might do.

This is an over the top character action game with all the tropes and mechanics you've come to expect. X and Y weak/strong attacks strung into combos. 4 different weapons types. Standard med speed/med damage/med range(sword type), fast/short range/med damage(dagger type), fast/long range/low damage(chain type) and Slow/low range/high damage(hammer type). As well as elemental magic attacks. Though these do more or less the same thing except the ice one. Powerful AOE attack.

Its got block puzzles, its got platforming, ledge grabbing, timed based swings and jumps. It also has a really weird and out of place vertically scrolling shooter that happens more than once.

The banter between the main character and the mask that gives the character powers is actually funny at times and very self aware. It never really gets in the way or become annoying.

It's paced pretty well, at the end it drags a little (but only a little). Maybe it over stays its welcome by a small unit of measurement. If it were maybe 4-5 hours long it'd be perfect. 6 or more if you're a completionist seems just enough to make me mention the length might be an issue.

It's more inspired by God of War mechanically but the aesthetics are pretty much Uncharted with some industrial zones. Even down to the Health Orbs being red, magic orbs being blue and XP orbs being gold/yellowish. Not to mention the right analog "push in direction to roll that way dodge)

Imagine the good parts of your favorite platformers and also aku aku from Crash bandicoot and plus mixed with some mechanics from God of war and you have this charming little masterpiece that does not seem to give one solid ♥♥♥♥ about what anyone thinks about it and that's ♥♥♥♥in' great.